Killer road with no traffic eye

KUMUD JENAMANI

A road in Jamshedpur has claimed 11 persons this year in accidents, but its most dangerous 300-metre stretch is unmanned despite the bloodspill.

The wide Sakchi-Mango Road, with over 10,000 vehicles a day ranging from two-wheelers to trucks, veers to a stretch beside Hathi-Ghora Temple, around 500 metres from the mouth of Mango bridge. Here, a 300-metre stretch between Gandhi Ghat and Jusco water filtration plant has claimed 11 persons in 2012 so far, but the nearest traffic monitoring point continues to be the gateway to the bridge.

The latest victim of this administrative callousness was a 24-year-old biker whom a truck ran over on October 5. In September, two persons were crushed to death — a 10-wheel truck hit a woman sitting pillion on September 28, while a mini-truck rammed into a biker on September 17.

The unmanned stretch, free of snarls as everyone from a moped to a trailer go speeding, makes a woefully inadequate concession to road safety in the form of a painted road divider that everyone ignores.

“I visit Gandhi Ghat for yoga. But I get jitters when I have to bike it back to my Bistupur home, crossing the danger stretch. Everyone, from bikes to autos to trucks, is on a speed thrill,” said 45-year-old businessman Avadh Narayan Singh.

But instead of pressing specific measures such as getting traffic monitored or making the road a no-entry zone for heavy vehicles, he blamed riders of two-wheelers.

“Riders don’t wear helmets and even dismantle their vehicles’ rear-view mirror, thus failing to see if someone is speeding behind them to overtake them,” he said.

Pointing out that the stretch had a dead turn, Sinha added that some two-wheelers ignored the painted divider and swerved to the right instead of keeping to the extreme left.

Rant against reckless driving over, Sinha admitted that even trucks and trailers sped on Sakchi-Mango Road as “it is comparatively wider”, flouting the city speed limit of 20kmph. On solutions, he stayed mum on police personnel, but said they would revive the traffic advisory committee “to take appropriate measures to ensure that all vehicles follow rules”.